the greek Miltiadis Tentoglou, Olympic long-distance champion in Tokyo 2020, will jump to Madrid on February 22, in the sixth and penultimate round of the international indoor World Athletics circuit, in a competition that will also include the Cuban Maykel Massó, the Swede Thobias Montler and the Spanish Eusebio Cáceres.
Tentoglou returned to Madrid as an Olympic and world champion. It will be the third time the Hellenic athlete will compete in Gallur, after debuting with a triumph in 2019 jumping 8.23meters. (at that time personal brand) and repeat in second place in 2020, also breaking the eight-meter barrier (8.07).
Since his last appearance in Madrid, Tentoglou has multiplied his record to become one of the best European jumpers of all time.
In 2021, he won his second continental title in indoor track and was proclaimed Olympic champion with 8.41 meters., although he did so thanks to a tiebreaker with his second-best attempt, which was 8.15. Since Athens 2004 no one has won Olympic gold by jumping 8.40 and throughout history only five Europeans have climbed to the top of the podium in the long jump.
Last season, Tentoglou led almost clean 2022 winning world indoor gold in Belgrade with a national record of 8.55 (3rd ever European mark), world outdoor silver in Oregon, his second European gold in Munich with a championship record of 8.52 and the Diamond League final in Zurich after winning four more rallies on the circuit
In Madrid, Tentoglou will face Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medalist Maykel Massó, who knows what jumped 8.39 outdoors and 8.08 indoors. Last summer, the 22-year-old Cuban fell just short of the world podium in Oregon, where he finished fourth, jumping 8.35 to win the Monica Diamond League event.
Swede Thobias Montler is also in Madrid, who in 2022 won world silver in indoor track (with a national record of 8.38 meters) and the European outdoor silver, in both championships surpassed only by Tentoglou. In 2021, he finished seventh at the Tokyo Games and made up for it by winning the Diamond League final in Zurich, chaining six years of jumping more than eight meters outdoors and four indoors.
Since 2017, no Spaniard has won the tournament in Madrid. Then it was Eusebio Cáceres who took the victory, who six years later sought to repeat his victory.
At 31 years old, Cáceres lives as the second young, and has chained finalist positions in all the international championships he has participated in since 2018, his best result being fourth place in Glasgow Indoor European Championship that year and fourth place at the European Championship in Munich 2022. In addition, he seeks to surpass eight meters for the thirteenth season in his career, more than any Spaniard in history.
The two athletes called to succeed him in the Spanish length will also compete in Madrid. These are Héctor Santos, runner-up in Europe under 23 in 2019, who was seventh at the last European Championship in Munich, and Jaime Guerra, 23, who jumped 8.08 meters outdoors in 2022 and started 2023 with 8.02 in indoor track.
The competition will be completed by the champion of the last Commonwealth Games, Bahamian LaQuan Nairn, who jumped 8.22 outdoors last year, and Chinese Changzhou Huang, world bronze indoor at Portland 2016.
Source: La Verdad
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